


The Bargain at Nurmengard

by RavenpuffLove



Series: The Art of Transfiguration [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Bribery, Imprisonment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:14:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25284457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RavenpuffLove/pseuds/RavenpuffLove
Summary: Young Minerva McGonagall visits Nurmengard prison hoping to strike a bargain with it's one and only prisoner.
Relationships: No Romantic Relationship(s)
Series: The Art of Transfiguration [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1831810
Kudos: 8
Collections: FtCF: Transgender Characters





	The Bargain at Nurmengard

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the Fuck the Canon Fest: Trans Characters, in The Headmaster's Office Facebook group. 
> 
> I self prompted and decided to write a prequel to my Trans! Minerva story. It was a lot of fun to write and I hope you enjoy it. 
> 
> Thanks to Charlie9646 for the beta! 
> 
> Of course I don't own it and profit not at all but it is intended as a specific fuck you to Jo Rowling. A fuck you to all TERFs actually..

To get to Hogwarts castle, one had to ride a train. Specifically one had to ride the Hogwarts Express.

This fact had astounded young Minerva McGonagall when she'd learned it. She'd understood well enough growing up that her, her mother, and her brothers needed to hide their abilities, so that they would never risk their true power being revealed to the Muggles. Despite this, she also knew that her mother could travel great distances at a turn of her heel, or by tossing a pinch of green powder into the kitchen hearth. Why in the world she would need to take a train when her mother should just be able to Apparate her to the front gates of the school had been one of the more confusing mysteries of her young life.

If she hadn't been so confused about so many things at the time it might have troubled her further, but in the end the lure of her school books and the promises of  _ Transfiguration for Beginners  _ had captivated her enough to put the question to rest.

She understood now that the Hogwarts Express put all children on even footing going into the school. Even the Purebloods would be doing something out of the norm for their lives. Every student began their schooling in the same fashion and that meant something, if only ceremonially.

Now, she was on a different sort of train to a different sort of castle which didn't allow Apparation for an entirely different sort of reason.

The Norwegian Ministry had been more than happy to grant her a Portkey to Salzberg, Austria, but that was as close as they could get her to her final destination. Nurmengard Castle was unplottable. There were no Apparation points, portkeys, or floos allowed within fifty miles of the place. If one wanted to visit there was only one way to make the journey and that was by taking the  _ Zug Nurmengard _ .

There was no Honeyduke's candy cart. There was no plush and comfortable interior. There was not even the comforting murmur of conversation on  _ Zug Nurmengard _ . There were no compartments, only the single long empty car lined with benches on either side. The seats were hard wood covered over sparingly with ugly upholstery and nothing seemed to be transfigurable.

Minerva could only be glad to not be making the journey completely without company. Though she was the only passenger on the  _ Zug _ that day, she was never left alone. A burly blond wizard stood guard near the head of the car, and his eyes seemed to always be wandering Minerva's way, even if they never actually landed on her.

Typically Minerva would have been uncomfortable with the scrutiny, but it was clearly an official kind of observation. She could tell that he was monitoring her to try and make sure she didn't enact some nasty plan to help the Prisoner of Nurmengard escape. He had no interest in whether her shoulders were broader than than was normal for a woman, and she hadn't spoken to him so it was clear he hadn't noticed that her voice was a bit creaky and false, her new way of speaking still not quite a perfected habit. No, the guard only cared that she sit quietly in her seat and watch the scenery go by in the small, clouded window across from her seat.

It was the scenery that gave Minerva the clue that they were nearing the bastion of the Great Wizarding War. Suddenly, almost as if they had crossed a line, the trees became strange and twisted, as if they had survived a great explosion or some terrible transfiguration that had left them half-mangled. In the nearby mountain deep gouges were just beginning to show the signs of young saplings.

It really hadn't been very long since this place had been a battleground.

The train pulled to a stop at the foot of Nuremgard without ever giving her a good look at the building. Stepping out of the car she could see that it was almost impossibly tall and narrow. The highest tower that was her final destination was so high and spindly that it seemed to sway in the wind despite everything being made of the uncut piece of grey stone.

Inside she was relieved of her wand and all enchantments she might have placed upon her person, which made her glad that she had chosen the plain black high necked jumper under her robes. It was severe but it hid a multitude of things that might raise questions. She was a little surprised by the restrictions, as well as the sheer number of people that seemed to be bustling around Nurmengard.

As far as she knew it only housed one, wandless man.

Minerva was young and strong, used to walking up the endless stairs of Hogwarts and later the physical exertion of her Transfiguration apprenticeship, but even so, the trek up to Grindewald's cell had her winded before she'd made it even halfway up the steep, spiraling stairs. Once she'd finally reached the top she found herself staring straight into the mismatched eyes of one of the most deadly wizards of all time.

Gellert Grindelwald might have been handsome once, probably still was by some standards. He was not a tall or imposing man, but his eerie face gave him a menacing air. His long tangled hair and beard looked like they might have been pure white if they'd been clean and his angular face was hauntingly striking. The eyes should have been beautiful, in the way that only rare things can be, but instead they seemed to reveal the unbalanced nature within, raising the hairs on the back of Minerva's neck as she panted at the head of the stairs and his gaze stayed locked on her.

“They had told me to expect a visitor today, but I didn't know it was going to be a Scotswoman. You've come a long way to speak with me.” He said, seating himself in the rickety chair on one side of a table that completely filled the narrow gap of his cell door.

“How did you know where I'm from?” Minerva asked once she'd caught her breath, she knew her accent was strong but no one had ever known  _ before _ she spoke to them. It had startled her even more than the surprise of stumbling into a room to be separated from a mass murder by nothing more than some kind of ward and a flimsy table.

“Tartan is not a common pattern here, and yours isn't a fashion statement. That is the pattern of the Ross clan, a Wizarding family.”

“I wasn't aware you know much about Britain.”

“I was there for some time as a young man.” Grindelwald looked wistful, as if the time had come back to him with the sound of her voice. “The other young man I stayed with acquainted me with a few of the local eccentricities.”

“I see.” Minerva wondered what young man had hosted him, long before he'd committed his crimes. “Well, I did come a ways, but not all the way from Scotland. I live in Norway now.”

“That is still quite a long journey to come speak with a man convicted of genocide.” He replied, seeming to take joy in the way that Minerva flinched at the mention of the reason for his imprisonment “What brings you here Miss Ross.”

“It's Mrs. Olsen actually.” She corrected him quickly, not bothering to tell him that Ross had been her Mother's maiden name not hers. It seemed best to keep some details to herself. She trusted in the strength of this prison, but you could never be too careful.

“I am sorry, Mrs. Olsen, congratulations on your nuptials.”

“Thank you, and as for why I've come to Nurmengard . . .”

Minerva stumbled over her words as she looked into the disconcerting contrast of his eyes, the light one seeming to watch her with unnatural steadiness. His courtesy unnerved her. She'd met anti-Muggle bigots back home and since coming to the continent, but they'd all seemed to fall into two categories. Those who didn't even seem to realize how offensive they were being and those too rabid to bother with niceties.

She'd assumed someone with his history would fall into the second category, and she wasn't certain how much she liked having that expectation subverted. It was difficult to get what you needed from someone who you couldn't understand.

“I came to ask you to teach me the theory behind your self-transfiguration.” She finally said, hoping that matching his directness would serve well.

Grindelwald might have been more handsome than she had expected, even through the grime of imprisonment, but his laughter was exactly what she would have expected of the villain that she'd read of at the end of the war. It was a cackle, pitched low and sinister in a way one never expected such a wild laugh to be.

“You know I wondered if some enterprising young Transfigurist would ever come looking for that knowledge.” He finally said, his face still split into a wide grin that revealed shockingly white, even teeth. “I could only assume that the threat of being blacklisted by Dumbledore kept most of them away. No one wants to be prevented from working with the world's foremost,  _ unimprisoned _ , Transfigurist.”

“Headmaster Dumbledore doesn't need to know.”

He looked genuinely surprised at her suggestion.

“You think that he won't read what you publish?”

“I have no plans to publish your work under my name.” Minerva felt her mouth purse with distaste at the idea of taking credit for this monster's work. “It is important to know where our knowledge comes from, lest we begin to forget that intelligence and moral fiber aren't one in the same.”

“A respectable sentiment, much like the one I live my life by, 'don't give away your power for free'.” Grindelwald replied, nodding sagely, his eyes still locked onto Minerva's face in a way that made her feel as if he was looking into her mind. Maybe he was. She had no idea if he was a  _ legilimens _ .

“I thought your motto was 'for the greater good'?”

“Funnily enough, I stole that one from Dumbledore.” He said with a chuckle, his eyes unfocusing and staring off into a wistful remembrance as they had when she'd made him think about visiting Britain.

His response made her wonder again about what young man might have been his friend so long ago, but Minerva thought it best not to respond.

“What is it you plan to give me for the secret to, arguably, my greatest achievement?” He finally asked as the moment of reverie seemed to pass and his narrowed eyes were once again focused on her.

“I didn't bring anything.” She answered honestly.

“Well, if you don't mind then, I have a request. I would like to speak to my old foe, Al-” he cut himself short and shook his head as if to clear it. “Dumbledore, again. If you can bring me a letter from him I will happily give you the location where I hid away my journals. You should be able to reconstruct the spellwork from there.”

“I don't know how you expect me to do that.” Minerva protested, the gears of her mind sticking as she tried to find a way out of it. “I don't have a working relationship with him. I was simply one of many students.”

It wasn't strictly true. Minerva had been an exemplary transfiguration student and was well aware that her professor had expected her to ask him for an apprenticeship. . .but she'd worn a different name then. She'd been a whole different person. She valued the fresh start of her new life, and she wasn't entirely sure the information she sought was worth revisiting her past.

“Don't you want to be able to wear whatever you want?” Asked after staring at Minerva for a long moment, his almost invisible brows pulled together in a way that wasn't entirely unkind. “Isn't having to hide your neck, your shoulders, just to avoid suspicion exhausting?”

Minerva froze.

“I'm not commenting on your taste or your styling. You are a pretty girl.” He assured her quickly. She clearly wasn't the first person he'd known who lived as a different gender than the one they were assigned at birth, at least well enough to know that he was toeing the boundaries of what she would tolerate by even bringing it up. “But there are clues that are outside of your talent to manipulate.” He didn't elaborate and Minerva breathed a sigh of relief at that at least. She was well aware of the ways in which her body didn't conform to standard. “My spellwork can help. The self-transfiguration can last months at a time without recasting, unless it is specifically broken.”

Minerva would be lying if she said the thought hadn't occurred to her. She liked her body for the most part, liked her face. She wasn't looking to reconfigure herself intensely. . . but wishing she could reduce the appearance of her adam's apple is what had sent her down the rabbit hole of self-transfiguration in the first place.

But it wasn't why she was here, and she was determined he knew it.

“I'm not here for my own benefit, no matter what assumptions you may have made.”

“I didn't say that you were. I just wonder why you'd hesitate to reach out to your old professor with a request for a letter when you have so much to gain and so little to lose.”

“You do understand that people wouldn't exactly approve of me having come here?” She asked, “Many think that we should just leave the theory to rot, considering what you did with the knowledge.”

“But you think differently, don't you?” There was a soft smile on his face that reminded Minerva so viscerally of an interested academic that she felt sudden, unwanted kinship to him blossom in her gut. “You know Animagi have used their power for ill on many occasions but it didn't stop you from learning the form of your animus. What are you, I wonder? A mighty lioness? A clever rat?”

She didn't answer.

“Keep your secrets then,” He sighed after some time of waiting, leaning back in his chair and looking out through the small window of his cell. It's not like I have any use for them, but come back with the letter from your old Professor or don't bother coming back at all. It's the only thing I'm willing to trade the information for.”

With that it seemed she'd been dismissed. Where the opening in the wall had been there was now nothing but the same solid stone that made up everything else.

Grindelwald and his little wooden table were now hidden away somewhere behind the immovable rock, and Minerva had been left with nothing but her thoughts and a choice to make.

* * *

“I wasn't sure you would come back.” Grindelwald exclaimed as soon as she made it to the head of the stairs on her next visit. “It's been so long I assumed you'd decided not to take me up on my offer.”

It had been some time. Three months to be exact. It had taken that long for Minerva to come up with the courage to bring what he had asked for. At the time he seemed to have changed not at all. He was the same level of dirty and the same level of unsettling that he'd been on their last encounter.

“I wasn't sure either.” She told him truthfully as she settled into the seat on her side of the little table, hands sweating where they were fisted inside the pockets of her robes. “I brought you a letter from Headmaster Dumbledore.”

“I'm glad that you saw sense.”

Minerva placed the parchment envelope on the table and pushed it through the semipermeable barrier between them.

Grindelwald ripped open the letter with surprising violence. So far he'd been remarkably affable during their interactions, more reminiscent of a bored academic than a genocidal tyrant. She'd only managed to glimpse brief moments of whatever viciousness he kept locked away, a flash in his eyes as they narrowed at her or the disconnected wistfulness that seemed to overtake him when he thought about the past.

But the moment she gave him the letter all his charm and nonchalance fell away. His strange, dual colored eyes looked suddenly wild and gleeful as they devoured the words on the page and Minerva felt sweat begin to bead on her upper lip.

It was a simple missive.

_ Gellert, _

_ I was asked by a former pupil to write to you and against my better judgment I have done so, though I don't know why you'd want to hear from me at this point. _

_ I know that young Minerva has come to ask you for your theory, and I only agreed to write to you to encourage you to give her what she has asked for. You have done many things but none of us can deny your mastery on the topic of self-transfiguration. The knowledge shouldn't die out with you. _

_ Unless you want your only legacy to be your failed gambit at enacting wizarding supremacy I suggest you follow the words you have held so dearly and act in the interest of the greater good. _

_ Sincerely, _

_ Albus Dumbledore. _

Grindelwald's face was ecstatic as he read through the letter, as if Minerva had given him a Christmas present instead of a rather terse letter from a former rival.

“Of course he can't deny my mastery at self-transfiguration, he never could even manage to center himself enough to uncover his animus, much less attempt any more delicate or permanent self-transfiguration.” Grindelwald finally remarked, rolling his eyes and shaking his head at her conspiratorially, as if she would agree with him whole-heartedly. “Thank you for this. The prison wardens don't have to give me quill and parchment to write back to anyone unless I've received post from a vetted source. Dumbledore is on their shortlist.”

“How do they know that you are only writing back to who has written you?”

“They don't.” The grin he flashed her could only be considered devilish, in the most literal meaning of the word, and for a moment Minerva regretted having come to see him again at all, and then he finally said. “You've earned what you came for.”

“For once I think you're right.” She replied dryly, wishing she could lash out and deflate his obvious gloating.

“My journals are hidden in the ministry Library at Oslo. I placed copies of them there when it became clear that the war had a less certain outcome than I'd hoped. They are shelved in the Magizoology section and transfigured to look like a multivolume treatise on flobberworms.”

No wonder they had never been found.

“How do I get past whatever you've put on them to keep people from touching them?” Minerva asked, certain he wouldn't have left them with nothing but a transfiguration to protect them, nevermind how effective the ruse might be.

“It's a simple notice-me-not spell.  _ Finite Incantatum _ on the right shelf should reveal them to you easily.” He said distractedly, his gaze locked onto the letter with the same intensity that he'd shown her last time. With nothing to gain from her she was evidently no longer to be subjected to his intense regard.

“Thank you.” She said as she got to her feet, glad not to feel burdened with making small talk. She didn't have to stay if he didn't care.

“It was a pleasure doing business with you Mrs. Olsen.” He replied, still polite even in his distraction. “I hope the spellwork is everything you've imagined it to be.”

The trek back down the narrow, winding staircase was just as nerve-wracking as climbing up. Minerva felt her gorge climbing into her throat whenever her eyes slipped past the next step down the spiraling steps, but she couldn't totally attribute that to the architecture of Nurmengard. Even down in the guards station she found herself nauseous as she listened for a rage filled scream from above while they returned her wand to her, even though she knew she couldn't hear anything so far away.

Her gut didn't really settle until she was settled back on the train and the austere machine had taken her far from the foreboding atmosphere of the mountain fortress. She watched the barren rock morph into sickly grass and strange, twisted forests and thought about the short encounter with Grindelwald.

The imprisoned tyrant had been gloating the minute he saw her. He was so certain that he had won whatever game he thought he had set that he didn't even bother to hide his pleasure at her capitulation. It was unseemly and she hated him more for the bad sportsmanship than she expected possible considering the nature of the atrocities he had committed. It didn't seem like there should be room for petty annoyance but Minerva managed it.

At least he had made it easy for her to bask in her own triumph now that she'd won. If he'd been truly grateful, or just emotional at receiving a letter from Dumbledore, who he seemed to have some level of true fondness for, it would have made it much harder for her to enjoy the warm glow of victory that came over her as she crossed into the unmarred scenery of the Austrian Alps, away from the influence of Grindelwald's hidden prison.

Minerva cast a quick  _ Tempus _ and smiled to herself as she saw that it had been an hour since she'd left his cell. He should be realizing now that she hadn't left him with a letter at all, but a half crossed off grocery list that she'd dug out from the bottom of her bag and transfigured to be filled with Dumbledore's neat, curling quillmanship. The enchantment she'd used to hide it hadn't been particularly long lasting or advanced. It would have been easy to detect, even wandless, but he simply hadn't bothered to check.

He'd relied on the prison's regulations to keep her honest and that was his mistake. Minerva had never found a rule she wasn't willing to break when the moment required it, and furthermore she wasn't beyond letting someone else do the rule breaking, like the guard who'd been more than happy to let her transfigure the list before taking her wand and leaving the scrap of paper out of the scope of his  _ Finite Incantatum. _

Minerva found she was more at peace than she had ever expected to be as she leaned against the back of the bench and admired the views that had seemed so unfamiliar on her previous trips to and from the prison. The remainder of the ride back to Vienna was filled with the same lingering feelings of accomplishment that had always filled the trip to London from Hogwarts. It was nostalgic and satisfying. She wondered if when Grindelwald finally did manage to get access to quill and parchment she could look forward to his best attempt at a wandless howler.

She couldn't wait. 


End file.
